In the past few weeks, my ASTU class has begun to explore a new medium of literature on 9/11: poetry. I’ve appreciated getting to know a different way of expressing one’s personal perspective on this event and on trauma in general, focusing especially on the unique strengths of both Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Spahr’s poetry in This Connection of Everyone With Lungs. In analyzing Spahr’s work, our class discussions took a turn into analysing the definition of a witness. Understanding this term is crucial in analyzing any personal perspective, yet its boundaries are not easily defined. My thoughts in this blog will derive from this idea: how is the idea of a witness explored in Foer’s and Spahr’s work? Which is more effective?
As I see it, the debate on the definition of a witness has two main perspectives: one is a belief that there must be a tangibly personal element to one’s account for it to be credible, while the other is more accepting of a broad and varied audience—anyone that has a personal reaction, and feels some sort of connection to
In many ways, Foer’s work advances the perspective that to be a witness one must have some sort of personal connection with the event. We can see this specifically through Oskar’s character, who keeps his trauma and grief to himself, and feels that is is meant to be this way:
“It makes me incredibly angry that people all over the world can know things that I can’t, because it happened here, and happened to me, so why can’t it be mine?”. This may be able to be equated to the structure of this novel—it focuses on deeply exploring one point of view—someone who is very close to a trauma.
On the other hand, Spahr, sharing from her personal perspective as one who did not have a first-hand personal connection to 9/11, but still felt its after effects as a resident in the US, develops the second perspective. She shows that an event can have a very powerful impact on an individual, even if they have not witnessed it in an intimately personal way.
In my opinion, I’d take the side of that which is interpreted from Spahr’s work, but with a crucial distinction: that rather than ranking or eliminating certain witness accounts as valid, it is most beneficial to take into consideration every manifestation of a witness. Spahr’s development of this idea through her position was clearer to me, because I am of similar understanding and position in my witnessing of 9/11. That said, this only empahsizes the importance of every perspective—each speaks more clearly to their own audience, and provides other audiences with something to think about.